A new music and craft beer blog - because the internet really needed another one of these.

Swift One // Verdant - Don't Tell Gus!

"Swift One" // NOUN. British, informal. An alcoholic drink (often, but not necessarily, a half-pint of beer) consumed quickly, usually of mythical singularity.

Centennial, Bravo, Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, Cascade. Christ Verdant love their hops. Restraint might not be one of the Cornish breweries forte’s but there’s been little to suggest it’s simply throwing pellets against a steel wall and seeing what sticks. Unsurprisingly, Don’t Tell Gus is a brilliantly balanced DIPA, and every bit as good as the internet would have you believe.

Slick, chewy peach and orange pith dominate against a subtlety sweet malt profile, with an accompanying pillowy head and mouthfeel too boot. Indeed, it a maelstrom of resinous tropical flavours, and a complex monster with just enough burn to bring the hypebeasts back for more. So far so Verdant, then.

Maybe it’s the presence of Centennial or Bravo but there’s also an ever so slight old-school component that’s hard to place, though we’d speculate it’s not a million miles a way from a truly souped up Gamma Ray (We’re looking at you Bravo, and Centennial).

We’re sure that the rating hoards will be the first to slam down on Verdant should they slip up anytime soon. But, frankly we don’t see that happening. Not now. Not ever, really. Though they seem to have conquered a genre, they’ve proved time and time again the sheer scope of variety within a supposedly closed framework. So, here’s to the next one, and the next one, and the next one…